I will skip the politics and go right to the technical side.
1) Both debaters were wearing standard stage microphones. The cheap ones transmit on publicly known frequencies. I have no doubt that they were using the good ones, which are spread-spectrum types that are much more of a pain to hack. Bigger battery packs because it’s a stronger signal. Note that they ahd backup wired mikes, which they would have gone to in the face of any attempt at jamming, spoofing, etc . . . while the TechInt SS people went looking with RF signal strength meters in one hand and an ASP baton in the other.
2) Kerry was allowed to bring notepaper for notes. It would be interesting to see if the sheet was blank. By the rules of the debate, it should have been. Bush didn’t bother to take notes. Which is odd. You’d think that in the most important political debate of your career, you’d take notes. A sign that someone else may have been doing it for him.
3) The President always wears a bulletproof vest and an alert monitor in public. The latter would indeed fit into the right ear and be flesh-shaped. If our friends at the SS were paying even minor attention to security (which is kind of THEIR JOB), the alert monitor would not only be on an obscure frequency with extraordinary encryption, but it would also be a two-way link set up to avoid variable signal strengths and traffic analysis. There’s no point to having a private channel to the President if other people can figure out you’re using it from a distance. The tactical use of this is for some alert spotter to say "Gun!" on the tac net, and the handler to say "Duck!" (or some other code word) so the President can get behind that armored podium.
Could this channel be used for cheating on the debates? You bet. Would the Secret Service go along? Probably. Remember they are there to defend the life of the President, and really don’t care about the political end. But there would be at least five or six SS agents in the operations van who would know the truth.
Any speculation that the President would be GPS-chipped is silly. I mean, wouldn’t it be nice to track the President if he tried to escape, I mean was kidnapped by terrorists?
4) I would not be terribly surprised if the President had a subdermal implant. I would be amazed if the subdermal implant was not used to "handle" his public appearances.
5) I really appreciate the suggestion about the acoustic beam. This is a mature technology and would be immune to spoof as it would be wired in advance. It would explain why the debaters were restricted to their own "boxes" during the debate . . . because otherwise, Kerry could just walk over, listen, and debate Rove directly, cutting out the middle monkey.
I will skip the politics and go right to the technical side.
1) Both debaters were wearing standard stage microphones. The cheap ones transmit on publicly known frequencies. I have no doubt that they were using the good ones, which are spread-spectrum types that are much more of a pain to hack. Bigger battery packs because it’s a stronger signal. Note that they ahd backup wired mikes, which they would have gone to in the face of any attempt at jamming, spoofing, etc . . . while the TechInt SS people went looking with RF signal strength meters in one hand and an ASP baton in the other.
2) Kerry was allowed to bring notepaper for notes. It would be interesting to see if the sheet was blank. By the rules of the debate, it should have been. Bush didn’t bother to take notes. Which is odd. You’d think that in the most important political debate of your career, you’d take notes. A sign that someone else may have been doing it for him.
3) The President always wears a bulletproof vest and an alert monitor in public. The latter would indeed fit into the right ear and be flesh-shaped. If our friends at the SS were paying even minor attention to security (which is kind of THEIR JOB), the alert monitor would not only be on an obscure frequency with extraordinary encryption, but it would also be a two-way link set up to avoid variable signal strengths and traffic analysis. There’s no point to having a private channel to the President if other people can figure out you’re using it from a distance. The tactical use of this is for some alert spotter to say "Gun!" on the tac net, and the handler to say "Duck!" (or some other code word) so the President can get behind that armored podium.
Could this channel be used for cheating on the debates? You bet. Would the Secret Service go along? Probably. Remember they are there to defend the life of the President, and really don’t care about the political end. But there would be at least five or six SS agents in the operations van who would know the truth.
Any speculation that the President would be GPS-chipped is silly. I mean, wouldn’t it be nice to track the President if he tried to escape, I mean was kidnapped by terrorists?
4) I would not be terribly surprised if the President had a subdermal implant. I would be amazed if the subdermal implant was not used to "handle" his public appearances.
5) I really appreciate the suggestion about the acoustic beam. This is a mature technology and would be immune to spoof as it would be wired in advance. It would explain why the debaters were restricted to their own "boxes" during the debate . . . because otherwise, Kerry could just walk over, listen, and debate Rove directly, cutting out the middle monkey.
— Demonologist